•“This book is about language processing in the humanbrain and, more specifically, what happens to spokenlanguage when certain areas of the brain are damaged.”(p.3)

•Is this my idea?

•Notice that processing is mentioned before damage.

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

4

What is processing?

•Process

orprocessing

typicallydescribes the action of takingsomething through anestablished and usually routineset of procedures or steps toconvert it from one form toanother, such as processingpaperwork to grant a mortgageloan, processing milk intocheese, or converting computerdata from one form to another.

•Aprocess involves steps anddecisions in the way work isaccomplished, and may involvea sequence of events.

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

5

What is online processing?

What is language processing?

•“Language processing is what takes place whenever weunderstand or produce speech.” (p.3)

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

6

Is there any other kind of languagebesides speech?

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

7

What does ‘modularity’ mean?

•Modularity

is designing a system that isdivided into a set of functional units (namedmodules) that can be composed into alarger application. A module represents aset of related concerns.Modulesareindependent of one another but cancommunicate with each other in a looselycoupled fashion.

•Imaginean online banking program. Theuser can access a variety of functions,such as transferring money betweenaccounts, paying bills, and updatingpersonal information from a single userinterface.However, behind the scenes,each of these functions is a discretemodule. These modules communicate witheach other and with back-end systemssuch as database servers. Applicationservices integrate components within thedifferent modules and handle thecommunication with the user. The usersees an integrated view that looks like asingle application.

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

8

Language and modularity

•What does it mean to say that language is modular?

•How can you tell?

•What other cognitive ability might be modular?

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

9

What does‘localization’ mean?

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

10

Brodmann’s areas, functions

What is aphasia?

What is phrenology?

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

11

What is this?

Signified

Signifier

dog

perro

Hund

kalb

txakur

gao

ofi

can

jagua

8/28/13

Brain & Language-

Harry Howard-

Tulane University

12

the relation is arbitrary

Representation

•What is a symbol?

•How many linguistic symbols do you know?

•“language…involves a kind of doubling of our perceptualuniverse” (p. 6)

•This implies a doubling of the computational capacity of the brain.

•What is representation?

•What is first-order representation?

•Ingram: the brain’s representation of objects (perception) and events(episodic memory)